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Friday, January 3, 2014

Dinner at Home: Day One

Today has been a chilly day, and when I'm cold, I crave soup. Chicken noodle sounded just about right. I used two whole chicken breasts (bone in, skins removed), a handful of chopped potatoes and carrots (about 5-7 of each of them), 3 or so cloves of chopped garlic, and a chopped onion. I sauteed the veggies in a little olive oil and then added the chicken breasts. Then I covered all of the ingredients with water, allowing about 3 inches of extra water on top. Jonah seasoned the soup for me. I know he added salt and pepper, and I think I saw him add oregano, basil, rosemary, and garlic salt too. I set it on the wood burner to boil for an hour.

Then I mixed up the noodles. If you've never made noodles from scratch, you should try it! They're easy and much more satisfying than pre-made noodles.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper (optional)

2 eggs

1/4 cup water

Stir together the dry ingredients, stir in eggs, and then incorporate the water. All of this can be done by hand in a mixing bowl, although the dough will be dry. Usually, I take it out of the bowl and knead it a bit on a floured counter top. Then, roll out the dough so it's about 1/8-1/4" thick.

After I have rolled out my dough, I use this handy board scraper to cut my noodles into long strips. You could also use a butter knife. After I've cut the strips, I cut each strip into 4-5 pieces so we all get plenty of noodles in our soup--and cutting them into shorter pieces makes them easier to slurp up.

This is the pile of noodles once I got them all cut up. I let them rest on the counter top with a little extra flour mixed in so they wouldn't clump together. Once the chicken was cooked through and the whole house smelled like soup, I pulled out the chicken so I could cut it up and then put the noodles in to cook.

And then I added the chicken back into the soup, and there you go! Simple and satisfying.

My lovely husband added some fresh whole wheat rolls that he just happened to whip up this afternoon, and it was a perfect supper.